Sikharam Prasanna Kumara Gupta, popularly often known as S.P.Ok. Gupta, who handed away in New Delhi on January 29 at the age of 92, was a veteran journalist and biographer of scientists.
He started his journalism profession as a workers correspondent with the information company Press Trust of India (PTI) in 1952 in Madras and subsequently labored in Kurnool (which was the capital of Andhra Pradesh for a while), Mumbai, and New Delhi in numerous capacities. Gupta was posted as PTI correspondent in Moscow in the tumultuous interval of the Nineteen Eighties. Although he reported on politics, the authorities, and the courts most of the time, his editors didn’t thoughts if he used his spare time to write down on science and medication, about which he remained passionate till his passing.
If the title Yellapragada SubbaRow (1895-1948) resonates in any respect in the scientific circles and standard creativeness of in the present day, the credit score goes totally to Gupta. He not solely wrote a well-researched biography of this pioneering medical scientist however did every little thing – from getting the authorities to launch a postal stamp in SubbaRow’s honour to organising memorial lectures and exhibitions in universities – to maintain the scientist’s reminiscence alive.
Gupta turned to journalism after failing to safe a seat in a medical school. After graduating in science from Mysore University, Gupta did a diploma in journalism from the University of Madras. The interview board was puzzled {that a} science graduate wished to pursue a course in journalism as a result of science reporting in Indian information media was unusual at the time.
While trying to find themes on which to write down standard science articles, Gupta got here throughout one by American microbiologist and creator Paul Henry de Kruif in the March 1947 challenge of Reader’s Digest. It was entitled ‘The blood is the life’; one of its footnotes talked about SubbaRow as somebody who had synthesised folic acid. Another article by de Kruif in 1949 was about the discovery of an antibiotic, aureomycin, by SubbaRow at Lederle Laboratories, a facility operated by the American Cyanamid conglomerate.
A curious Gupta wished to know extra about SubbaRow and his work – however he may solely discover sketchy references and a few obituaries in the American press. So he dashed off a letter to Lederle on the deal with printed on the label of one of its merchandise. It was at Lederle that SubbaRow had spent some of his most efficient years, creating tetracycline and different antibiotics in addition to anti-filarial and anti-cancer medicine between 1940 and 1948 as its analysis director. Lederle despatched Gupta some of SubbaRow’s papers and different biographical info.
For the subsequent three many years, Gupta tried to piece collectively the SubbaRow story by means of correspondence, secondary analysis, and interviews. On the one hand, he traced SubbaRow’s household and associates in Andhra Pradesh and Tamil Nadu, and on the different, he contacted his colleagues and analysis contemporaries at Harvard University, the place SubbaRow did his PhD and was a analysis scientist, and Lederle, the place he joined in 1940.
Gupta additionally visited Lederle, consulted the archival materials and over the years carried out about 125 oral-history interviews. These included about 45 working and retired analysis scientists at Lederle. In this activity, he was helped by Edgar Milford, the director of the archives at Lederle, till his retirement in 1965.
In India, Gupta interviewed all residing members of the Yellapragada household, together with SubbaRow’s mom, spouse, father-in-law, and brother-in-law. Among the scientists, Gupta interviewed Sahib Singh Sokhey, the former director of Haffkine Institute. Sokhey had been SubbaRow’s senior in the biochemistry division at Harvard Medical School. SubbaRow despatched aureomycin to Haffkine, the place Sokhey was in a position to save 9 out of 10 experimental animals affected by septicaemia attributable to the plague germ Pasteurella pestis utilizing the drug.
Gupta lastly revealed the SubbaRow biography, ‘In Quest of Panacea: Successes and Failures of Yellapragada SubbaRow’, in 1987.
Gupta was the first to focus on SubbaRow’s pioneering work on the improvement of chemotherapy, primarily based on revealed scientific papers in addition to unpublished notes. SubbaRow had synthesised aminopterin in his lab as an offshoot of his work on folic acid and equipped it to Sydney Farber and one other physician, Leo M. Meyer, for medical assessments amongst most cancers sufferers. A word dated December 19, 1946, from SubbaRow’s lab mentioned folic acid having a deleterious impact on leukaemia in animals, indicating that “the administration of an antagonist of folic acid to a patient, therefore, might inhibit leukopoiesis and cause a symptomatic improvement”. Aminopterin was the antifolate that SubbaRow’s crew had synthesised. Farber acquired a consignment of aminopterin in November 1947.
However, Siddhartha Mukherjee’s guide ‘The Emperor of All Maladies’ described Sidney Farber as the “father of modern chemotherapy” who “accidentally discovered a powerful anti-cancer chemical in a vitamin analogue” referred to as aminopterin. Gupta was shocked at this inconsistency as a result of Mukherjee had met him at his residence in Delhi whereas researching for the guide. Gupta had additionally given Mukherjee a duplicate of an image of Robert Sandler, a toddler affected by leukaemia who was the first one to learn from chemotherapy administered by Farber. Gupta had discovered the image in a information story that had appeared in the Boston Herald on April 9, 1948.
Another unsung scientist whose work Gupta dropped at gentle is Kolachala Seeta Ramayya (1899-1977), who made basic contributions to the science of tribology whereas in America first after which in the Soviet Union. He developed totally different compositions of components to enhance the efficiency of motor oils, and his work gave an edge to the Soviet Union in World War II by protecting battle tanks manoeuvrable even below altering climate situations.
Gupta deployed the similar approach of tracing Ramayya’s household in India and the Soviet Union in addition to his scientific achievements, and put collectively a biography that was revealed in 1997. His stint as the PTI correspondent in Moscow helped him meet members of the family and associates of Ramayya in the Soviet Union.
Ironically, whereas Gupta may accumulate sufficient analysis materials to write down full-length biographies of two unsung scientists, his efforts to write down biographies of Shanti Swarup Bhatnagar and Homi Jehangir Bhabha didn’t come to fruition. In each circumstances, fast members of the family didn’t cooperate.
Gupta lined the atomic vitality programme in its nascent years in the Nineteen Fifties and Nineteen Sixties, so he determined to pen the life story of Bhabha quickly after his premature demise in 1966. As half of this undertaking, Gupta interviewed some 60 scientists, academicians, painters, and directors. The record included M.G.Ok. Menon, Atma Ram, S. Bhagavantam, A.S. Rao, B.D. Nag Chaudhuri, Piara Singh Gill, B.P. Pal, Homi Sethna, N. Seshagiri, E.C.G. Sudarshan, M.R. Srinivasan, L.Ok. Jha, and V.Ok. Krishna Menon. All the interviews had been carried out in the Nineteen Seventies. Since Bhabha’s brother, J.J. Bhabha, didn’t cooperate, Gupta couldn’t full the biography.
As a final resort, he revealed the interviews in the kind of a guide in 2022. This was Gupta’s final contribution and gives invaluable insights into an vital period in Indian science.
Gupta’s contributions as a science journalist, editor, and biographer had been immense, though he shunned the limelight. He belonged to an period of journalism when info had been certainly sacrosanct. He was of a uncommon breed of writers who maintained a lifelong obsession with their topics and believed in thorough analysis and accessible storytelling.
Dinesh C. Sharma is a journalist and creator primarily based in New Delhi.
